


and i'll be back (again and again and again)

by dancingpenss



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Can't believe I have to tag that, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Leonard Peabody Can Die, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Swearing, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Shenanigans, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 11:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18207677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingpenss/pseuds/dancingpenss
Summary: Five stumbles to his feet and looks up at his family.They seem so...startled. Staring, like they can't believe he's back, even though he's been back over and over and over.Of course, they don’t know that. They never do.//Five relives the eight days before the apocalypse over and over again in a whirlwind of equations, alcohol, and failure.





	and i'll be back (again and again and again)

**Author's Note:**

> The Umbrella Academy hit me upside the head and knocked me flat. The soundtrack slaps. Five is my favorite. I love time travel shenanigans. Expect more. 
> 
> (title is from the highwaymen by the highwaymen.)  
> //
> 
> CW: Mild to strong language.  
> TW: Implied suicide. No one stays dead.

Five stumbles to his feet, and looks up at his family.

 “Fuck.”

//

The first time (and oh, how long ago that was; yet Five can still taste the triumphant, electric shock on his tongue as he lands back in his childhood home) everything goes south so quickly. He muddles through, making mistake after mistake. Too many mistakes.

 He tries to take them with him, seconds before the end, and something goes wrong. Another mistake.

He can hear the old man’s voice.

“I thought you would do better than that, Number Five. Try again.”

//

“What the hell is wrong with you, Five?” Luther barks, the fortieth or forty-first time through, his forehead wrinkled with worry and age and their father's disapproval.

Five glances over their worried faces and scoffs. “Everything, Luther.”

He takes another bite of his peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, and vanishes, wondering why he still cares enough to come back here after all this time.

(He knows why.)

//

Five visits Dolores once, and once only, near the beginning.

“I didn't forget about you, I promise,” he tells her, standing in her store, hands sheepishly in his pockets. “I just didn't want to drag you into it, the second time through, and since then...well, you understand, Dolores. You're the only one I can protect.”

His eyes burn at her reply, and he sighs. “I knew you would get it. You always do.”

She smiles. She's wearing sequins.

Five scrubs his hand over his face, feeling all the long years of his life at once. “I'll come back for you when this is all over. Until then, the safest place for you is here.”

 _Here, where_ _I won’t be,_ he doesn’t say.

He does not visit her again.

//

“Allison!” Klaus’s shout is more like a sob, his face ghastly pale. He claps a hand over his mouth and keens, the sound high and horrible in his throat.

Five slams his foot on the brake. The ice cream truck screeches to a halt.

“Klaus? What about Allison?” Luther’s voice is rough.

“Shit,” Five mutters. He grips the steering wheel tight, imagines Allison, blood bubbling up from her throat as she lies alone on the wooden floor. Klaus can see her. They were too late this time, and she's already dead.

Diego looks up from Klaus, who is crying, reaching out to the sister only he can see.

Five doesn't bother explaining or waiting, he just pulls the gun out from his waistband and settles it against his temple with a sigh. Every time one of them dies, he’s already failed.

“Restart.”

//

Five stumbles to his feet and looks up at his family.

They seem so...startled. Staring, like they can't believe he's back, even though he's been back over and over and over.

Of course, they don’t know that. They never do.

He gives himself a moment to really look back this time. Drink them in.

Klaus’s unkempt hair, and the frown-lines etched onto Luther’s face. Allison’s disbelief, the way Diego stands, trying to shield them. Ben is probably here, too, invisible.

Vanya. Vanya, with hope in her eyes.  

“Anybody else see little Number Five?” Klaus says, voice wavering. “Or...is that just me?”

“I’m back, who cares,” Five interrupts caustically. His patience is running sadly thin these days, and he’s just exhausted it reminding himself why he’s still fighting against the end of the world. “I'm sure you're all pleased to see me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an apocalypse to stop and planning to do.”

He fucks right off to where he knows they won't find him and digs out a notebook to write out his newest set of equations, adjusting for the changes he made last time around.

He'll figure this out.

He will.

//

 _Could this be the Commission?_ The thought has crossed his mind. That maybe it’s them. Maybe it’s her. Maybe they’ve trapped him in this endless cycle, as he tries and tries and tries to change it.

It would be the perfect trap, a hamster wheel for the legendary Number Five to run on forever, to keep him from stopping the apocalypse. The perfect torture for an old, mad genius who can keep himself alive out of sheer willpower and the relentless pursuit of his one goal.

If it is meant to torture him, Five thinks, it’s working. To get so close, sometimes; to have endless chances to get it right, only for something to always go wrong. To calculate and recalculate, time and time again, only to crash and burn, regardless of his odds.

Five prides himself on his self-awareness. He knows that he probably went at least a little insane years ago, but if he hadn’t, this...this would have driven him mad.

But if it _is_ the Commission...well, one thing he doesn’t understand (out of too many) is why the Commission doesn't seem to know.

They come after him every time, but they never seem to know, and surely, _surely_ they would slip up at some point. Hazel and Cha-Cha couldn’t be this blasé about being forced to repeat the same job again and again, possibly for eternity.

Somewhere around the seventy-seventh time, at a particularly low point, he tries accepting the desk job the Handler offers and staying put.

Five grits his teeth and does his job, wondering if maybe they have a point, if things are supposed to go this way, and for once, ignores his siblings dying (even though the skeleton bones of his moral compass scream _save them save them save them_ —).

Can it be that letting the apocalypse happen breaks the cycle? If it does, maybe he could restart outside the time loop, travel back again….

His inner turmoil doesn't matter: when the world ends yet again, he finds himself no longer at his desk, putting together paperwork on the sinking of the Titanic. Instead, Five is stumbling to his feet and looking up at his family’s faces for the seventy-eighth time, with the added guilt of how he didn't even try to save them.

To atone for it, he tries blowing up the Commission, and blows himself up in the process; two bullets are buried in his gut as he grapples with the Handler on the cold metal floor.

Five dies in a blast of light, with blood bubbling up between his bared teeth and his hands tight around the Handler’s throat, and that doesn't matter either.

//

“I have...what?” Vanya says, in the voice of someone who is used to cruel jokes.

“Powers,” Five repeats. He has killed Harold Jenkins (Again, he reminds himself. Again. He has killed Harold Jenkins every single time) and this time, Five can’t wait for a better moment. Vanya needs to know her own secret.

She needs to understand.

“Powers? Five...I—I’m ordinary.” Vanya looks tired, and sad, and for the millionth time, Five wishes that he did more about her tired sadness before he left, so many years ago. He did a little, but it was only a little, and a little is never enough.

“You are not ordinary,” Five assures her. “Dad was an asshole and you were never ordinary. He just wanted you to think that, because he was afraid.”

“Of—of me?” She leans her elbows on her knees, her eyes wide and hurt and scared. “Five, I don’t know...none of this makes any sense.”

Five sighs. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

He tells her everything, and wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of her sobs.

He holds her as she bleeds out from her wrists on her cold bed and cries with her.

//

“Try again, Number Five.”

//

The second time—the first time he repeats the eight days—Five laughs in disbelief. This...this was not part of the equation.

“I’m back,” he says, and doesn’t bother getting up.

He stays kneeling, in the too-big suit that his adult body was wearing at Kennedy’s assassination, and thinks. He can hear their concerned voices somewhere that seems a million miles away, and can feel their hands on his shoulders; but his mind is in a different place. A theater, lit by the fire of the moon, as he grasps onto his family’s hands for dear life and puts his whole being and all his power into one action that could save their lives.

How can _that_ have led to _this?_

“I'm fucking _back_ ,” he croaks. Diego's hand is on his elbow and Luther's is on his back, as he kneels on the gravel near their father's ashes. Vanya’s fingers are cool on his cheek. Only moments ago, Diego was staring into a vortex of blue light and Luther carried Vanya unconscious in his arms.

“You're back,” Allison says, like that's all that matters, brushing his hair back from his face. Klaus echoes her, his voice awed, and Five laughs again. Only moments ago, Allison’s voice was gone. Moments ago, he could see Ben’s wide eyes and hand on Klaus’s shoulder.

How the hell is he going to fix this?

//

If Klaus is captured by Cha-Cha and Hazel, he will go to Vietnam roughly 60% of the time. If he is not, he will go only 10% of the time.

The times when he goes to Vietnam are the times when he is sober, and heartbroken, and when he can conjure Ben. When Klaus can conjure Ben, there is a much better chance of making it through the battle at the theater.

When Klaus cannot conjure Ben...well, usually Five has to hit restart just before the end, which is both annoying and inconvenient.

To be honest, Five is mostly just tired of hearing his siblings scream as he steps into the hail of gunfire.

//

“Try again.”

//

Five does not have, cannot _get_ enough paper to do all the equations that he needs to, but he tries to do them anyway.

He factors in everything he has already done, everything he has already tried. He factors in every failure, every temporary win.

Five factors in deaths and not-deaths. He factors in wounds and skirmishes and donuts and pills.

He plans and plans and plans and every plan fails.

//

Sometimes, Vanya kills Harold Jenkins. If she doesn’t, Five does. He usually tries to do it before she ever meets him, but something else always, always goes wrong.

Five tries keeping Harold Jenkins alive a total of one time. Because he has to. Just in case.

He does not try it again.

//

“Look, I'm not saying I _don't_ believe you,” Klaus protests.

“But,” Five prompts.

“But...you realize you sound as crazy as me?” Klaus reclines back on the couch, his dark-lined eyes resting heavily on his brother.

Five considers this momentarily, and considers Klaus's twitching fingers and the occasional glance at the empty air and the blue tentacles in the theater.

“What I have realized,” Five says, “is that you were never crazy at all.”

//

He spends the third and fourth and fifth times trying to desperately convince them, one by one, but they never believe him until it's too late.

//

“Don't go in there,” Five says, leaning against the wall of the apartment.

Detective Eudora Patch looks at him, startled. “Who are you?”

“Diego's brother, not that it matters,” Five deigns to explain. “Don't go in there.”

She eyes him. “Why not?”

“You'll die.”

Detective Patch tilts her chin up. “You can't know that.”

“I do.” Five pushes away from the wall and approaches her slowly, sticking his hands in his pockets. “And you will. I can save my brother—the one in there making all the racket.”

“You?”

Five knows he doesn't look like much, but. “Yes. I just need you to leave.”

“Even if I did die, why would you care? I don’t even know you.”

Five shrugs. “The equations aren't working anymore. I'm not sure what might fix everything. Thought I'd give saving you a shot.”

She lives, but Klaus dies, and Five has to start again.

//

It takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out about the sound-proof cell in the basement, and Five is ready to shoot himself in the foot for not discovering it sooner.

“Let her out,” he growls. He stares past Luther, to where Vanya is screaming noiselessly, pounding on the glass.

“Look, Five, we can’t,” Luther tries to placate him. “If she hurts anyone else—”

“She will,” Five says, meeting Luther’s gaze furiously. “She will end the _world_ if you keep her in there.”

“She can’t get out of there—”

“Yes, she _can,"_  Five snarls. “I know you’re naturally inclined to be a moron, Luther, but try to resist your nature just for the moment!” He jumps through space past his brother and hauls down on the wheel, which groans and moves maybe an inch.

“Hey!” Luther grabs his shoulder. Five turns and promptly punches him in the face. Luther is not hurt, but is taken aback enough to step back for a moment, and Five takes the opportunity to wrench at the wheel again. Diego maneuvers around Luther and applies his own strength. The door screeches open, and Vanya collapses, shaking, her face wet, into Five’s and Diego’s arms.

“Hey, it’s fine, Vanya,” Five says. “It’s okay.”

“I...I didn’t mean to,” Vanya sobs, “I didn’t mean to hurt Allison, I swear, I swear…”

“I know,” Five tells her. “And you’re not going to hurt anyone else.” He even manages a real smile for her. Maybe this is it, maybe finally it’s over, maybe he did it.

This could be it.

But it turns out that Five got a little careless disposing of Jenkins, and in the middle of their ensuing family discussion upstairs, he reappears. The bullet Five put in his heart was apparently more like a bullet to the shoulder, and he shoots Diego, and Vanya explodes, and—

//

“Try again.”

//

Every repeat, he runs out of one more thing to try, and the equations have done nothing to help for so long now. They add up less and less, and often refuse to balance.

Without science, he is left with guesswork, and Five never was good at games of chance.

//

“You look thirteen, but you say you're older, and all you've done since you showed up after being missing for seventeen years is drink,” Allison protests, snatching Five’s bottle.

“Saving the world isn't working so well, as it turns out,” Five admits, tasting the nasty black tang of a truth he doesn't like. “What else do you want me to do?”

“Anything but this,” Allison replies firmly.

“I am not your child,” Five snarls. The cold ice of hopelessness bites at his chest. “Go pester her instead before you lose the chance.”

Allison is silent for a moment, sitting next to him at the bar. He snatches the bottle back bitterly.

“God, Five. What happened to you?”

Bottoms up.

//

Five arrives on the floor of the Academy in the middle of a meeting he knew he was missing, bleeding out from six stab wounds and a bullet to the leg.

“Oh my _god,"_ someone gasps—Klaus, maybe.

“Let it be,” he breathes, his hands, covered with blood, fluttering over his ruined body. “Let it be.”

Luther tries to press down on the wounds anyway, apply pressure, his jaw tight with horror.

“Fuck you if you think we’re letting you die,” Diego swears at him. “You won’t do that to us, you asshole.”

“Let it _be,"_  Five pleads, more sharply than before. He coughs wetly. “It’ll be okay.”

“It won’t, it won’t,” Allison snaps, her smaller hands pressing down next to Luther’s big ones. “Oh, god…”

“It will,” he promises, voice hard and strained. “Next time, I promise. I won’t fail.”

“You’ve never failed us, Five,” Vanya says desperately, her hand tight on his.

“Every time, I fail—”

“No,” Luther growls, pressing down harder. “ _No_ —”

“I’ll do better,” he swears, and then coughs up blood. His eyes are hazy with tears and agony, but Five can see when Ben’s face fades into view in the empty space next to Klaus’s.

“Ben,” Five chokes out. “Good to see your face.” The pain is fading fast.

“Five…” Ben’s face crumples.

“Restart.” He grins, bloody and sharp, and is gone.

//

Five stumbles to his feet and looks up at his family.

“Okay,” he says, more to himself than anything. “Here we go.”

…

“A _what?_ ” Diego protests.

“A time loop,” Five repeats, rolling his eyes. “Kind of like that one movie we got Mom to rent when we were eleven or twelve, with the weather guy? Remember?”

“Groundhog Day?” Vanya supplies.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Hold on, why would we even believe this?” Luther holds up a hand for them to stop.

“Why _not?"_  Five demands. “Who’s the time travel expert in the room? Oh, that’s right, it’s me.”

“Okay, okay. So even if we did believe you,” Allison tries, “wouldn’t you have told us about this before? In other versions of the loop?”

Five sighs. “Yes, of course I would have. This is far from the first time I’ve tried.”

Diego frowns, leaning against the back of the couch. “And?”

He finds himself rolling his eyes again. “ _And_ , it never works, because you morons never believe me until it’s too late. After all, you don’t believe me this time, either, so this is just another failure. I should restart now before I waste any more of my time.”

“Can you give us any proof?” Luther asks, massaging the bridge of his nose. He looks tired.

“No!” Five throws his hands up in the air, his throat suddenly tight. Why is he upset that they don’t believe him? He knew this was coming. “I have no proof! Nothing, other than everything I’ve already told you.”

“I don’t know,” Diego says, shaking his head. His frown is worked deep into his forehead, the kind of frown that means he’s trying to process something and can’t.

“Without any proof, how can you expect us to—” Allison tries to ask.

“ _I can’t!_ ” Five shouts. He turns away in the heavy silence, his hands sliding through his hair, scrubbing over his face, and then coming down to rest across his chest. He is vibrating with frustration, shoulders hunched. “I...I can’t. I never can. It’s just that I’m...out of options. I’ve done the math a hundred times, a _thousand_ times. Nothing ever works. You never believe me. And I can never save you.”

Despair is a malicious creature crawling up his spine and settling on his shoulders, around his neck, to strangle him and weigh him down. It will never be over, this nightmare that he is trapped in alone.

“I believe you,” Vanya whispers.

Five turns slowly, eyeing her. “You...what?”

“I believe you,” she repeats, meeting Five’s gaze.

“You believe me,” he says dumbly, all his massive intellect escaping him. The creature on his shoulders shudders.

“I believe you too,” Klaus adds, uncharacteristically somber. “And, uh...for the record, so does Ben.”

“Ben,” Five murmurs, letting his lips twitch up. Ben is here and Klaus is admitting it and Vanya believes him and Diego’s frown is starting to look pensive.

This is the best it’s ever gone. The despair creature trembles. As Diego, then Allison, and then finally Luther are convinced, it shrinks and then is gone.

They believe him.

They make it all the way to the end.

A different end.

Vanya keeps away from Leonard Peabody. Diego saves Patch. Allison doesn’t lose her voice. Luther isn’t such a stubborn asshole. Klaus goes to Vietnam without being kidnapped, comes back, and gets sober. Ben becomes invisible only sometimes.

Harold Jenkins and his stupid glass eye and a legion of the Commission’s goons corner the Umbrella Academy at Vanya’s concert, where she plays first chair. Luther rips out Jenkins’s eye.

Vanya, newly off her pills, screams and slashes her violin bow at the goons. Half of them go down.

Klaus, newly off his drugs, screams and manifests their brother.

Ben, newly manifested, wipes out the other half.

The Commission, panicked, remotely detonates a nuclear bomb at the moon, which breaks apart in a cloud of dust.

Five stands on the theater stage, sweaty and dusty and calm, with his siblings around him, and the missing piece of all his ruined equations pops into his mind.

He can practically hear Dolores laughing at him.

“I can fix this,” he tells them, and feels the truth of it in his bones. “It’ll work this time. This is how it was supposed to go, for it to work. I get it now.”

“What do you get?” Vanya asks, coming closer.

They all press in, the sky above them turning a strange color.

“Everything,” Five promises. “We’re going back. Back a long way, this time. I know what to do. Do you trust me?”

Vanya takes his hand, and Diego takes hers. Allison takes his, and Luther takes hers, and Klaus takes his, and then grabs Five’s other hand. Ben is visible again, his own hand clamped onto Klaus’s shoulder like a lifeline.

They look to Five.

Five takes a deep breath and focuses, a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. “This could get messy!”

//

Five stumbles to his feet and looks around at his family.

They clasp hands still.

Five grins.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
